Traditionally, businesses and other organizations have used focus groups, surveys, and feedback forms to gather customer data. These methods are largely one-to-one communications and biased toward the businesses, thus limiting the precision, accuracy, and depth of the insights gathered. Moreover, these methods generally produce customer data that is outdated which inhibits a business' ability to be responsive to customer's needs. However, customers are increasingly willing to join specialized social networks that speak directly to an interest or issue area of the customer. A social network associated with a business or organization provides customers with a platform to discuss issues with their peers and through which their voice can be heard.
Social networks include a variety of members who join to meet people, to discuss common issues, to locate information, etc. A social networking platform may include social networking features such as identity, presence, relationships, profiles, groups, discussions, and sharing. In general, a member of a social network has a profile that identifies characteristics of the member for other members of the network and for the social networking platform. The social network can facilitate interaction between members based on associations or relationships identified from the member profiles. A social network may include a plurality of sub-networks and groups that further characterize members. For example, a social network may be associated with a health care organization, a sub-network of the social network may be associated with cancer, and a group of the sub-network may be associated with lung cancer. Social networks may be accessed through a portal or a general website using a variety of computing devices including a phone, a personal digital assistant, a computer of any form factor, etc.
In the commercial sector, on-line merchants have created groups of customers who share common interests in the goods and services offered by the on-line merchant. Some merchants include systems that provide suggestions to their customers based on determined needs of the customer. In such commercial, social networks, customers interact with the merchant, but generally do not interact directly with each other. Additionally, current customer and business intelligence solutions provide information on what the customer is buying based on the interactions with the merchant. This purchasing data, however, only represents a purchase decision at a point in time and does not indicate why the customer selected a product for purchase; what resources were used to inform the buying decision; what the customer's objectives were in making the purchase; what will cause the customer to repeat their transaction; or what will cause other customers to purchase the product. Thus, what is needed is a system and a method that provides a customer interaction network platform that enables businesses to capture and analyze the collective intelligence of their customers through a customer-to-customer social network.